Disclaimer: I don't Heroes, and the fundamental concept of this story was inspired by rain and leaves' "Four Months Later" and is used with his permission

Feedback: I'd like it, trust me

A Leap to Safety

As he sat silently at a table in an empty room, wishing that he knew where Claire was or what was happening here, Peter wished once again that he'd mastered better control of his abilities; maybe if he'd been able to access the ability of that 'Parkman' guy Claire had mentioned he'd at least have some idea of what the hell was going on here…

As it was, however, so far he'd learned nothing; his entire time during the trip back had been taken up by his 'captors'- their talk about infection and symptoms suggested there was some underlying purpose to all this, but until Peter knew what they wanted he was going to consider himself and Claire captives- constantly asking him and Claire whether they had any symptoms or had been in any contaminated areas, seemingly ignoring their protests that they didn't know what anyone was talking about. After being taken to a decontamination room of some kind and violently showered down- Peter still fumed with rage when he thought of how those men had manhandled Claire while cleaning her; no matter what had happened to drive humanity to… this…, they could have been… rough with her-, Peter and Claire had been taken off in separate directions. Having been given the clothes he was wearing now- a simple white T-shirt and light grey trousers-, Peter had then been sent to the room where he currently sat behind a table, waiting impatiently for someone to provide him with answers even as he raced through what Claire had told him about his abilities to try and find aw ay out.

If only he knew how to access Parkman's power, he might be able to find Claire by 'searching' for her mind in this building or something like that… maybe he could just try and ask somebody for the answer and read their mind to get the real answer whatever they told him…

The sound of footsteps broke Peter's train of thought as he glanced up from the table, watching silently as a man walked into the room and headed straight for the table where he sat, a clipboard and a folder in his hand as he walked.

"Peter Petrelli?" the man said, looking inquiringly at him. "According to these files, you're a dead man."

"What?" Peter said, staring incredulously at the man before him.

Whatever he'd been expecting to hear, it hadn't been that he was dead

"I've got your death certificate right here," the man said, opening the folder and placing a piece of paper in front of Peter as he sat down. "So… you're gonna have to explain to me, how's a dead man walking around New York with no sign of infection?"

"Infection?" Peter repeated, looking back at the man, making no effort to hide his confusion; he had enough to deal with right now without trying to tell lies on top of everything else. "I don't know what you're talking about… and where the hell is Claire?"

"Miss Bennett was listed as missing almost a year ago; we're still trying to figure out what anyone wants to actually do with her-" the man began.

"Do with her?" Peter repeated, looking impatiently at the man before him. "Who the hell are you people? What's going on here?"

After a moment's contemplative silence as the man looked inquiringly at Peter, he finally spoke again.

"You really don't know?" he said, a slightly sceptical tone in his voice.

"Why would I be asking if I did?" Peter countered. "Would it be asking too much for someone to explain what's going on here?"

After a moment's contemplation, the man sighed and stood up.

"Come on," he said, indicating the door that he had entered by. "If you really don't know… I've got something to show you."

Standing up uncertainly behind the desk- after the way he'd been treated prior to this point Peter wasn't going to take anything at face value until he saw Claire again-, Peter walked after the man, who turned around a corner at the room's entrance and subsequently proceeded down another corridor.

"On March 20th, 2007, the first case was reported," the man explained, as he and Peter began to walk along a darker corridor in the building and up a small flight of stairs. "After that, the Shanti virus spread across the globe. A pandemic. It's killed 93% of the world's population to date; the rest of us live in quarantine praying to find a cure."

Peter's eyes widened in horror.

Ninety-three percent of the human race had died in just over a year?

"This can't be happening…" he said, as the man began to walk towards a large window on the opposite side of the room from the stairs they'd just entered by.

"I wish it wasn't," the man said grimly as he walked up to the window, stepping back to allow Peter to look through it himself.

The sight that met Peter's eyes as he stared through the window was like something out of a nightmare. On the other side of the window before him was a vast warehouse, filled with bodies that seemed to have been placed in rubbish bags and then piled on top of each other, as though the numbers grew so rapidly that there was no room to develop a more organised system. People dressed in contamination gear were also walking around among the various 'piles' as they moved bodies around; Peter could even see a truck that they were using to transport the bodies standing inside the building, along with a few of those elevating ramp things- what were they called, and had he known that before his amnesia?- that they were apparently using to add new bodies to the top of the piles.

Oh my God… Peter thought as he stared in horror at the sight before him, wishing more than anything that it wasn't real even as he knew that it couldn't be anything but.

"All these people died from the virus?" he said, as he stared out at the scene before him, unable to look away even as the horror of the scale of death before him continued to dominate his mind.

"Yeah, it's been a tough week," the man said, his tone giving no real indication of his feelings about the fact that death on this scale could happen in that short an amount of time.

For a moment, Peter simply stood in front of the window, staring silently at the mass of bodies before him, piled up like so much refuse simply because the scale of death made it impossible to be more thorough in disposing of the bodies, before the man behind him coughed slightly to draw his attention back.

"Come on," he said, indicating another corridor at the opposite end from the one he'd entered by. "There's someone who wants to talk to you."

"What?" Peter said, his thoughts temporarily taken away from the death before him at this latest turn of events. "I thought you said Claire-?"

"I did," the man said simply. "However, one of my superiors… she wants to talk to you."

For a moment, Peter thought about asking for more information, but decided that it wasn't worth it; in his current state, how was he even to know who the person he was being take to was, never mind why they might want to talk to him, even if he knew their name (Claire and he had talked about some of the people he'd met prior to his memory loss, but Claire had avoided mentioning any specific details; from what she'd read about amnesia she'd told him that it sounded like it would be best to let him recover information that didn't relate to what he could do on his own)?

With that, he followed the man down another corridor and long to another apparent 'registration' area, much like the one where the man had met him earlier. Unlike the last one, which had been empty apart from him, there was someone else already in the room on this occasion, a female figure sitting facing away from the room's entrance with dark hair dressed in black.

"I'll leave you two alone," the man said, pausing briefly outside the room's entrance to look at Peter before he walked away, leaving Peter to look uncertainly at the woman standing before him. After a moment's hesitation, Peter began to walk forward, eventually reaching a position just behind the woman, who turned and hugged him before he'd had time to see more than the basic details of her appearance (She seemed to be in around her mid-fifties to mid-sixties, although she gave the distinct impression that she was still in at least fairly good shape for her age).

Whatever her appearance, Peter didn't care about that right now; he might have no real idea what he was dealing with, but he wasn't going to start accepting hugs from strange women unless he knew why they were doing it.

"Do I know you?" he asked, looking pointedly at the woman.

After a moment's silence, she finally spoke. "They brought me here to help you, Peter. You need to remember who you are-"

"I need to find Claire and get out of this place!" Peter countered (He had no idea who they were- maybe some of the 'superiors' that other guy had mentioned?-, and right now he didn't care; he had an immediate 'plan' and he was going to stick to it).

"You need to focus," the woman said, continuing to stare intently at him. "You can move objects with your mind, heal-"

"Paint the future, turn invisible, fly, generate radiation, time-travel, and maybe some other stuff that I don't know I've absorbed since Claire last met me; I know all about that," Peter said, staring back at her with an intense glare of his own. "What's your point?"

"You may be the most powerful of us all," the woman replied (To her credit, she'd taken his outburst fairly calmly, although how Peter himself should take that he still wasn't certain). "You are kind and selfless, always thinking about others, but now you need to think about yourself and fly into the face of danger, just like your brother."

Peter blinked.

"I have a brother?" he said, trying to sound less shocked than he was (Why hadn't Claire mentioned something like that?).

"He died in the first outbreak," the woman said, his expression solemn at the memory. "But you… you can change that."

"How?" Peter said, looking at her with renewed intensity (If what the woman had told him so far was true, he still had a great deal of questions that needed answering before he was remotely satisfied with what he knew about this current crisis). "I mean, even if I time-travel back, how can I stop something like… like this? Why didn't this 'Company' I've heard about use Claire's ability to provide a cure; surely if she could heal herself she could have helped somebody figure out a cure for this-?"

"Claire went missing shortly after the virus broke out, and the only other source of her power was… missing; seeking her aid in finding a cure wasn't an option," the woman replied. "The virus spread too rapidly for us to search for her at first, and by the time that possibility was considered it was too late for anyone to find her. Right now, no matter what anyone else likes to think, you are our only hope."

"Look," Peter said, staring in ever-growing frustration at the woman before him, "according to Claire I could barely control what I was doing when I knew what powers I could use; how can I change history when I don't even remember how I picked up these powers in the first place?!"

As he struck the table before him in frustration, Peter was only partly shocked when his punch caused the table to crack practically in half, Claire had mentioned that he'd met someone with superhuman strength before he'd… vanished…

"Then this virus will kill us all," the woman said, still staring sympathetically at him as he stood above the shattered table, panting slightly as he stared at the broken piece of furniture before him. "Peter, you need to remember."

Remember

Peter could have kicked himself for not thinking of trying this earlier.

He might not have probed Claire's mind while she was teaching him- after everything she'd been doing for him it felt wrong to practise that power on her if she didn't give him permission-, but with the fate of the planet at stake, he didn't exactly have many options left.

Reaching into himself, he tried to access the telepathy that Claire had told him he possessed…

Then, as he sensed another's mind, he found himself witnessing a rapid spree of images-

A birthday party for a boy who could only be himself-
A graduation ceremony; he was sitting beside the woman, uncomfortable in a formal suit as a young man crossed the stage-
A funeral; sitting beside the older version of the graduating man as the woman before him stared solemnly at the sight before her-
Standing outside a hospital room; the woman walked out as he talked with the older man-
Waiting in what looked like an office; talking to the woman in an empty room-

Peter's eyes widened.

Was this woman…

Could it be…?

"Mom?" he said, his voice low as he looked uncertainly back at her.

Smiling while seemingly simultaneously holding back tears, the woman- his mother- reached forward to hug Peter, holding him close for a few moments before she pulled back, a new expression of resolution on her face.

"It's time you went back," she said simply, before she glanced at something behind him with a slightly saddened smile. "And here's the reason how."

"Peter?" a voice said uncertainly from behind him.

"Claire?" Peter repeated, turning around to look at the source of the speaker behind him, a broad smile spreading across his face as he saw the young woman- 'girl' was too inappropriate for someone who'd come through something this bizarre without going nuts- standing before him, a slight smile on her face as she looked at him.

She might have been dressed in a simple white shirt and grey sweatpants, but right now Peter couldn't think of anything that could be more beautiful than that.

He couldn't even think about stopping himself; unconcerned about whatever the reasons were for them not doing it before he lost his memory, Peter walked over to Claire, wrapped his arms around her, and drew her in for a deep, passionate kiss…


AN: Well, hope you all enjoyed that chapter; after the next one, things really begin to diverge from what happened originally…